The Terror Within II

Although widely considered as one of the lousiest (of many) earthbound- "Alien" knockoffs of the late 80s, I personally always had a weakness for "The Terror Within". This shameless imitation - produced by the equally shameless Roger Corman - featured non-stop gore, cheesy monster effects, and dumb but hilarious plot errors.

And you know what? I didn't expect anything less (or more?) from its rapidly put together sequel! R. Lee Ermey replaces George Kennedy, but other than that "The Terror Within II" is almost an exact replica of part one. A handful of last survivors are still hiding out in a subterranean laboratory, mutant creatures still dwell the earth's post-apocalyptic surface on the lookout of women to impregnate, and if the creatures don't wipe out the survivors some sort of random deadly virus will. Heck, even the idiotic dog-whistles remained in place as one of the sole effective weapons to battle the mutants. The only innovative aspect here is that a mutant's ripped off finger (!) slowly metamorphoses into a puddle of prowling blob/goo that attacks from inside the safe lair!

Well yes, this film is quite bad, but also thoroughly enjoyable. For some inexplicable reason (let's call it B-movie logic) only gorgeous women survived the apocalypse, and they're also eager to strip topless. Andrew Stevens, the lead hero of the original, promoted himself to also being the writer and director of the sequel, so the first idea he put in the script was that a gorgeous blond girl (Clare Hoak) falls in love with his character and immediately offers her body to him. Nicely done, Andrew!

Granted that I haven't watched the first "The Terror Within" movie, or at least don't have any recollection of watching it, should I have watched it during my teenage years. But regardless, I was intrigued by the synopsis of the movie, and decided to take a chance on it despite it being from 1991.

I should have gone with my gut instinct and stayed clear of this one. I managed to endure 35 minutes of this movie, before I gave up out of complete and utter boredom and a lack of interest in anything that happened on the screen.

This was low budget in every sense of the meaning low budget. The creature design was just abysmal, and most of the time you didn't see anything more than a poorly constructed oversized hand made out of questionable material. And the guns that people fired had no fire spray at the muzzle, and didn't even leave holes in walls when being shot through thin sheets of plastic. It was just atrocious to bear witness to.

The cast in "The Terror Within II" was relatively unknown to me, aside from R. Lee Ermey. Now that really puzzled me. How did they actually get him to participate in a movie such as this?

From what I managed to witness during my 35 minutes of watching this ordeal of a movie, I suppose the storyline was about mankind struggling to survive in a harsh and barren world overrun with mutants. Now, it was that same synopsis that had me lured in, because it sounded very much like something akin to the Fallout games. It might have been so in theory, but turned out to be a much less effective thing on the screen.

I have no intention of returning to finish watching this movie, and I also have no intention of going to sit down to watch the first movie. It just doesn't seem to be worth the time nor the effort.

The oohgaa freaking horn is annoying as hell right when the movie starts and just keeps getting worse as the thing goes on !!

THE TERROR WITHIN survivor David (Andrew Stevens) travels the post- epidemic wasteland with his dog Butch (Butch Stevens, no, really!) trying to get to an underground facility filled with more scientists in Denver. This proves treacherous thanks to the genetically abnormal Lucius creatures roaming the hills. THE TERROR WITHIN was a decent little late 80s Concorde flick and producer Roger Corman wisely let star Stevens make his writing-directing debut here. How good is Stevens? He brings back his freakin' dog while part one's female survivor is toast and written off in a line of dialog ("She died in the desert"). Even though this is essentially a remake of the first film, Stevens shows he is adept at handling the action and nudity (something that would come in handy in his T&A thriller work a few years later). He even gets his mom Stella in there alongside fine supporting work from R. Lee Ermey, Chick Vennera and Burton Gilliam. The effects are appropriately gooey and there is a really bizarre monster rape scene (initiated by Cyndi James Gossett, spouse of Louis at the time). Stevens brought Butch back in NIGHT EYES II the following year.

Andrew Stevens, co-star of the first film, boosts himself to the starring role in this very routine sci-fi / horror sequel. He also wrote the script and made his directing debut here, as his character David is out in the apocalyptic wilderness collecting ingredients for a vaccine. He hooks up with a lovely young lady, Ariel (Clare Hoak, "Cool World") who was traveling with her brother before they were set upon by the mutant monsters that plague this future world. They then need to double-time it back to the lab where Davids' colleagues are hard at work.

"The Terror Within II" is another of those low-budget genre flicks (this one made for Roger Cormans' post-New World company Concorde) that this viewer doesn't consider "bad" so much as simply pretty average. Much about it is familiar, especially that final quarter which turns into yet another imitation of "Alien" and "Aliens". That said, the monster is pretty cool (Stevens holds to monster movie convention by taking his sweet time in properly revealing it), there's plenty of gore, Stevens does his best working within the confines of limited funding, and there are two key talents that help make this watchable: composer Terry Plumeri ("Body Chemistry") and future Spielberg collaborator, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski ("Saving Private Ryan"). Kaminski started out his career working on a lot of these Concorde pictures, and it's clear he was destined for great things.

The cast is good and certainly above average, with Stevens' mother Stella ("The Nutty Professor") in a major supporting role. R. Lee Ermey ("Full Metal Jacket") once again effortlessly projects authority, although he later admitted that he just did this picture for the paycheck (to help pay for a house). Co-starring are Chick Vennera ("McBain"), Burton Gilliam ("Blazing Saddles"), Renee Jones ("Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI"), Barbara Alyn Woods ('One Tree Hill', 'Chucky'), and Gordon Currie ("Puppet Master" 4 and 5).

In general, this is not one of those movies one should go out of their way to see, but it wasn't a real waste of time, either, not for this viewer.

Five out of 10.